I Remember

At once an affectionate portrait of mid-century Paris and a daring pointillist autobiography, Perec's I Remember is the last of this essential writer's major works to be translated into English. Consisting of 480 numbered statements, all beginning with "I remember," and all limited to pieces of public knowledge--brand names and folk wisdom, actors and illnesses, places and things--the book represent s a secret key to the world of Perec's fiction. As Perec biographer David Bellos notes in his introduction, since original publication, "It's hardly possible to utter the words 'je me souviens' in French these days without committing a literary allusion." As playful and puzzling as the best of Perec's novels, I Rememeber began as a simple writing exercise and grew into an expansive, exhilarating work of art: the image of one unmistakable and irreplaceable life, shaped from the material of our collective past. For this edition, Perec's 480 memories, sometimes obvious, sometimes obscure, have been elucidated and explained by Bellos.